MOSCOW – Jailed Russian ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was found guilty of money laundering and theft of billions of dollars on Monday at a trial that has renewed doubts about the Kremlin’s commitment to the rule of law.
Khodorkovsky’s lead defence lawyer told Reuters he would appeal the verdict, which government critics say suggests longstanding Kremlin promises to reform a court system marred by corruption and political influence are insincere. Prosecutors are seeking an additional six-year prison term for the former Yukos oil company CEO but it could take judge Viktor Danilkin days to read what lawyers said was a 250-page verdict and announce a sentence.
Khodorkovsky is in the last year of an eight-year sentence imposed in 2005 after a politically charged fraud and tax evasion trial that shaped Vladimir Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency. Now prime minister but the dominant figure in Russia’s ruling tandem with President Dmitry Medvedev, Putin this month said Khodorkovsky had blood on his hands and that “a thief must be in jail”.
Khodorkovsky’s lawyers said the comments in a Dec. 16 television appearance were designed to exert influence in the case, which has accentuated a sense of personal rivalry between Putin and a business mogul who was once Russia’s richest man.
“What we are hearing leaves us no doubt that pressure was put on the court — that the court was not free when adopting this decision,” lead defence lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant said during a brief break in Danilkin’s rushed verdict reading. Medvedev signalled his disapproval of Putin’s comments, saying in a nationally televised interview on Friday that no official had the right to comment before a verdict was reached. Putin said later he was referring to Khodorkovsky’s first conviction.
The current trial has been closely watched in Russia and abroad ahead of a 2012 presidential election that could put Putin back in the Kremlin.
The European Union was following the verdict “very closely” and “expects Russia to respect its international commitments in the field of human rights and the rule of law,” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement. In the Moscow courtroom judge Danilkin said the court had established that Khodorkovsky and his former business partner Platon Lebedev “carried out the embezzlement of property entrusted to the defendants.”
The judge said the two men were also guilty of laundering stolen oil funds.
Enclosed in a glass-and-steel courtroom cage, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev pointedly ignored the judge as he read out the widely expected guilty verdict, talking to each other in hushed tones and reading. Hundreds of protestors gathered in sub-zero weather outside Moscow’s Khamovnichesky Court, holding pictures of the defendants and chanting “Freedom!” and “Shame!”
Itar-Tass news agency said some 30 were detained. Prosecutors say Khodorkovsky stole $27 billion in oil from Yukos subsidiaries through pricing schemes and laundered some of the money, charges his lawyers dismissed as an absurd, politically motivated pretext to keep him behind bars.
The verdict “is meant to show that the boss in our country is Putin,” said Yuri Korgunyuk, an analyst at Indem think-tank.
